Is anyone running WhatsApp without google play? I just migrated Graphene OS phones, but on the new one WhatsApp messages are not received when the application is not in the foreground.

I would prefer not installing sand boxed google play. IIRC, on my old device, which I don’t have anymore, since FCM was not available WhatsApp opened a background websocket for push. This post seems to suggest there is a setting in WhatsApp for this, but I can’t find it and I don’t recall ever setting this on the old phone. I have "Allow background usage" on in the app's battery settings.

From the log, I'm assuming WhatsApp never starts the service as a foreground service:

GooglePlayServicesUtil: com.whatsapp requires the Google Play Store, but it is missing.
...
ActivityManager: Stopping service due to app idle: ... com.whatsapp/.messaging.MessageService

What am I missing here? Maybe WhatsApp doesn't support the websocket mode anymore?

    glenn did you set it to "unrestricted"? In the "Allow background usage" menu, you need to click the text to open the submenu. It's usually set to "optimized" and definitely need to set it to "unrestricted".

      splattergames No, I didn’t. It seems to be working now. Thanks so much!

      I guess I learned about that terrible button + switch UI...

        Wait what? Whatsapp notifications work without google play services?

        That's the only reason i have google play services on one profile with whatsapp installed. Can i ditch it?

          r134a

          Yes you can ditch it. But you may need to re-install Whatsapp to switch to its built-in notification service, because it probably checks once at the beginning whether you have Play Services or not and won't notice if you uninstall Play Services later.

            SovereignCopper

            I don't know for sure, but I know that it's the case for Signal. It can do its own notifications or use Play, but it decides what to do at install time and needs a reinstall to change it.

            I disabled google play services and framewok, restarted whatsapp to test but notifications didn't come through. So i assume @Viewpoint0232 is right and whatsapp checks at time of installation.

            After disabling google play services i noticed brave became very slow, every website before loading takes like 5 seconds. Restarted phone and same behavior while no issues with vanadium. Probably need to reinstall brave aswell? Is brave dependant for some reason on play services if u had play services installed before installing brave?

            Just to report back, removed play services and reinstalled whatsapp and for the moment notifications work, nice thanks!

            Brave it's delay is gone after removing and restarting aswell, while disabled gave brave a delay.

            My music app wouldn't open aswell with play services, play store & framework disabled. Even after reinstalling. After removing play services and reinstalling, opens again.

            I guess disabling doesn't 'hide' the presence of play services, hence apps still trying to interact with it and unable to.

              r134a apps register the presence of Play Services on first launch. This is when they need to connect to Firebase Messaging, initialize various Play components like Billing or Play Integrity and other stuff. On a regular Android build you simply can't uninstall Play Services, so there's no need to design a check for changes in most apps that expect it. Thus apps need to be reinstalled to perform that first startup check.

                splattergames I'm aware, i reinstalled my music app several times with the play services suite disabled, in the assumption it would perform it's check on first install and move along. The app wouldn't go past the splash screen.

                I had to to effectively delete the play services suite and reinstall in order for the app to function.
                Basically i was trying to mention that 'disabling' play services suite and while reinstalling apps, the app in it's initial check still can see the presence of some component(s) of the play services suite, at least based on my observation.

                • xxx replied to this.

                  r134a i reinstalled my music app several times with the play services suite disabled

                  Wouldn' t you mind to mentian which app? Nervertheless there are plenty of Musicplayers that work without Play Service.

                    xxx Sure i don't mind, the app i talk about is Deezer. I feel like my english abilities are lacking to explain what i meant as it still seems unclear.

                    The app works without google play. The app was initially installed after google play service was installed.

                    After seeing here whatsapp can deliver notifications without google play, before actually deleting google play services suite, i went to system > apps > google play services and disabled it (framework and play store aswell).

                    I did this to see first for a while if there is weird behavior from other apps that i wasn't aware of.

                    I saw like i mentioned brave slow 5sec before loading a page, Deezer staying on splash screen and whatsapp no notifications (which i knew already).

                    Then i deleted whatsapp and deezer, rebooted the phone, checked if play services suite is still disabled. I know apps will perform their initial check on install if play services is available on the device. I reinstalled whatsapp and deezer. Deezer kept behaving as before uninstall while google play services are disabled, resting on the splash screen. I cleared cache and all app data, uninstalled, rebooted, tried reinstall again and same behavior. So i though weird, maybe the app won't work without google play services. I've tried installing Deezer in a profile without ever google play services installed and it worked.

                    So i came to the, for me, interesting observation that apps on initial check for google play services on install for some reason still can find component(s) from google play services while disabled, and probably tried communicating with it but unable to because disabled. I wanted to share that observation here, as for me it was interesting.

                    • xxx replied to this.

                      xxx Thanks for the suggestion but the app works fine without, and i don't need notifications on that app. I mainly use this app once in a while for its music disovery feature. On my main profile i use finamp with my own music library.

                      • xxx replied to this.

                        r134a Sorry I thought deezer dosn t work without the play service?

                        Nevermind I read your posts again -> it works without, so sure you don t need the google stuff.

                        In my experience, WhatsApp notifications sometimes don't actually work without Google Play, even though under "Battery Usage" WhatsApp is clearly running in the background, and I allowed unrestricted background usage for it.
                        Seems random whether or not a notification will show up (and unless I just switched to a different app without closing WhatsApp, they are delayed by at least 2-3 minutes).
                        Since the upgrade to Android 15, I almost never get WhatsApp notifications (BTW, according to the people I chat with through WhatsApp, on their end it seems the messages aren't even being received on my end until I open the app when this happens).